[GUIDE] Installing Snow Leopard/Leopard retail DVD on the GA-E7AUM-DS2H

[dlach]

Hey dlach,

thanks for the fast reply. As far as I know from this and the old thread, 4GB of Ram are no problem as long as you have an extra graphics card. I have one and I thought there is no problem installing SL with this setup (but I am not that deep in the material like you guys are here. So most of the time my conclusions are wrong ).

I will try the installation with 2 GB and if this also fails I will try it without the extra graphics card.

 

Btw. it is amazing how much effort you put into this board to get OSX runnning and I really appreciate that - Thank you!

wanky

 

(EDIT: Yes, flashed the BIOS - tried it with koala's and jon's)

 

Wanky,

 

Sorry, I failed to notice you were using a graphics card instead of the on-board 9400.

A couple of things:

 

- I have seen that >2GB can cause an installation failure like the one you describe.

- I suspect that once you get past the install you will be OK.

- That said, I am a bit concerned that the DSDT in these BIOS expect the 9400. If you have

further trouble after removing all but 2GB of ram and you want to use the graphics card then for best

results you probably want to flash back to the original F3a BIOS and generate a patched dsdt.aml

for your /Extra folder as per one of the many other SL guides in the SL install section of the forums.

[x4nd0r]

I think your question is, how is the memory dynamically protected, i.e. We don't have a problem with 2GB but do with more, how does the DSDT specify to move that region if we have more than 2GB? I don't know yet and I don't remember seeing a similar line in the Gigabyte DSDT but now at least I have something to look for. This is also something I can try asking Gigabyte about.

 

I think its certainly worth asking Gigabyte. Have you dumped the memory table post bios with 2Gb and 2GB+ a really saw the diffence ( one dump with protection other without)?

 

As this is a instruction from bios to cpu, there are two ways of fixing it. The obvious one is getting the bios fixed by Gigabyte, because the bios is responsible for protecting the memory.

 

The other one is writing a kernel extention (.kext), that simply marks the region as protected. This is some what more difficult, as SL kernel source is closed. Finding the API is for memory mapper can be difficult. An other way to do this is to directly sending in structions to the cpu. The kernel dosn't take that much memory so and the .kext are loaded at boot time ( a little memory is used ).

To produce a kext this will cost some effort, if i find someware some time i'll try to cook something.

 

-X

[adidasprince]

Here's some info of my e7aum with 2GBx2 mem which are plugged in the red slots.  Hope it helps.

 

- TurboCache: In Windows, it'll be enabled only by >2GB.  I don't know if its the same in osx.

 

- sysctl (10.5.8 vanilla)

kern.exec: unknown type returned<BR>hw.physmem = 2147483648<BR>hw.usermem = 1722667008<BR>hw.memsize = 4294967296<BR>kern.himemorymode: 0<BR>hw.memsize: 4294967296

 

 

- report from RivaTuner in win7

 

- said by Device Manager of win7

 

- said by Chameleon 2.0 RC2

 

- memtest result in osx 10.5.8

256m_memtest.txt

512m_memtest.txt

256m_RivaTuner_report.txt

[dlach]

I think its certainly worth asking Gigabyte. Have you dumped the memory table post bios with 2Gb and 2GB+ a really saw the diffence ( one dump with protection other without)?

 

As this is a instruction from bios to cpu, there are two ways of fixing it. The obvious one is getting the bios fixed by Gigabyte, because the bios is responsible for protecting the memory.

 

The other one is writing a kernel extention (.kext), that simply marks the region as protected. This is some what more difficult, as SL kernel source is closed. Finding the API is for memory mapper can be difficult. An other way to do this is to directly sending in structions to the cpu. The kernel dosn't take that much memory so and the .kext are loaded at boot time ( a little memory is used ).

To produce a kext this will cost some effort, if i find someware some time i'll try to cook something.

 

-X

 

Since the MacBookPro with 9400 doesn't have a special kext, I don't believe we need one either. I suspect if I can patch that memory exclusion into our BIOS correctly it will just work.

 

That said I did send essentially my post #147 to Gigabyte. Hopefully we'll get something useful back, if only advice. In the meantime I hope to get some time to work on it this weekend. As far as I can tell the section is question is standalone. I.E. I see no references to it anywhere in the DSDT. Perhaps I can just patch it in.

 

Since the MacBookPro with 9400 doesn't have a special kext, I don't believe we need one either. I suspect if I can patch that memory exclusion into our BIOS correctly it will just work.

 

That said I did send essentially my post #147 to Gigabyte. Hopefully we'll get something useful back, if only advice. In the meantime I hope to get some time to work on it this weekend. As far as I can tell the section is question is standalone. I.E. I see no references to it anywhere in the DSDT. Perhaps I can just patch it in.

 

 

Errr Maybe not. Turns out the is the Global APCI memory region and it is where the BIOS passes info to ACPI. The good news is that I think they are specific to a chipset so maybe...

[wanky]

Wanky,

 

Sorry, I failed to notice you were using a graphics card instead of the on-board 9400.

A couple of things:

 

- I have seen that >2GB can cause an installation failure like the one you describe.

- I suspect that once you get past the install you will be OK.

- That said, I am a bit concerned that the DSDT in these BIOS expect the 9400. If you have

further trouble after removing all but 2GB of ram and you want to use the graphics card then for best

results you probably want to flash back to the original F3a BIOS and generate a patched dsdt.aml

for your /Extra folder as per one of the many other SL guides in the SL install section of the forums.

 

I removed the additional RAM and the GFX und the installation went smoothly . So now I am trying to generate my DSDT.aml, but that does not seem to be easy. With ACPI Patcher I always get errors, so I am still working on that and search the forum for solutions.

wanky

[dlach]

I removed the additional RAM and the GFX und the installation went smoothly . So now I am trying to generate my DSDT.aml, but that does not seem to be easy. With ACPI Patcher I always get errors, so I am still working on that and search the forum for solutions.

wanky

 

Wanky,

 

So to generate that dsdt, you've re-flashed the original F3A bios and you're booted under Windoze (I assume because you're using Koalala's DSDT patcher). You extracted it from the running system right? I recently read you shouldn't extract it from a BIOS file because it changes slightly on a running system.

 

The main error you're going to get is the NVH7 one. Blueknight's workaround in post #82 here seems to work. Although I suspect there is a better way.

Once you get one working you can boot to OSX and try DSDTSE.

 

good luck!

[rbonon]

Hello all,

 

first post, and of course some newbie question. First, many thanks for all information and work put by all in this thread, particularly dlach.

 

I have read the whole thread, and managed to install SL on this board, following the guide on first post. All seems to be working fine except audio (no audio at all, I did check that line out was selected) and sleep (which I suppose do not work properly at this moment with this board). I suspect I am screwing up with the kexts, so I would appreciate your help on that:

 

- I followed the guide to the letter, installed SL, Chameleon, etc

- Copied the contents /Extra from preboot.dmg to the /Extra folder on my Mac Harddrive, as per the instructions

- Copied all Kexts from Jon55 also to these /Extra folder. Since there are some duplicate between Jon55 and BootCD kexts, I am confused as to what goes where (/Extra or /Extra/Extensions).

 

Should I just put every kext from Jon55 inside /Extra/Extensions, overwriting existing ones; and then fix the permissions? Or should they go under /Extra instead? What about the duplicates, which ones should I keep and where?

 

Sorry for the newbieness, cannot go further this point.

 

Regards & Thanks in advance for your help

[dlach]

Hello all,

 

first post, and of course some newbie question. First, many thanks for all information and work put by all in this thread, particularly dlach.

 

I have read the whole thread, and managed to install SL on this board, following the guide on first post. All seems to be working fine except audio (no audio at all, I did check that line out was selected) and sleep (which I suppose do not work properly at this moment with this board). I suspect I am screwing up with the kexts, so I would appreciate your help on that:

 

- I followed the guide to the letter, installed SL, Chameleon, etc

- Copied the contents /Extra from preboot.dmg to the /Extra folder on my Mac Harddrive, as per the instructions

- Copied all Kexts from Jon55 also to these /Extra folder. Since there are some duplicate between Jon55 and BootCD kexts, I am confused as to what goes where (/Extra or /Extra/Extensions).

 

Should I just put every kext from Jon55 inside /Extra/Extensions, overwriting existing ones; and then fix the permissions? Or should they go under /Extra instead? What about the duplicates, which ones should I keep and where?

 

Sorry for the newbieness, cannot go further this point.

 

Regards & Thanks in advance for your help

 

No problem with the questions. And thanks for reading before asking.

You want your kexts to go in /Extra/Extensions and then repair. I personally only copied the audio kext in, instead of all of them.

Then repair permissions.

[rbonon]

No problem with the questions. And thanks for reading before asking.

You want your kexts to go in /Extra/Extensions and then repair. I personally only copied the audio kext in, instead of all of them.

Then repair permissions.

 

Dlach,

 

thanks! Audio is working right now.

 

I tried to enable "Restart" following Jon55 instructions without success, here is what I did:

 

- Copied PlatformUUID.kext and SleepEnabler.kext to /Extra/Extensions

- Did the UUID changes on /Extra/com.apple.boot.plist

- Did the UUID changes on /Extra/Extensions/PlatformUUID.kext/Contents/Info.plist

- I had to do the UUID changes via terminal using sudo, as via Finder I was getting error about permissions.

- Repaired permissions.

 

 

I even tried regenerating my Extensions.mkext and reparing permisssion via terminal using a small script:

 

#!/bin/sh
KEXT_RETAIL="/System/Library/Extensions"
KEXT_EXTRA="/Extra/Extensions"
MKEXT="/Extra/Extensions.mkext"
chmod -vR 755 "$KEXT_EXTRA"
chown -vR root:wheel "$KEXT_EXTRA"
kextcache -v 1 -t -l -m "$MKEXT" "$KEXT_EXTRA" "$KEXT_RETAIL"

 

No way to get restart working. What am I doing wrong?

 

Thanks!

[dlach]

Dlach,

 

thanks! Audio is working right now.

 

I tried to enable "Restart" following Jon55 instructions without success, here is what I did:

 

- Copied PlatformUUID.kext and SleepEnabler.kext to /Extra/Extensions

- Did the UUID changes on /Extra/com.apple.boot.plist

- Did the UUID changes on /Extra/Extensions/PlatformUUID.kext/Contents/Info.plist

- I had to do the UUID changes via terminal using sudo, as via Finder I was getting error about permissions.

- Repaired permissions.

 

 

I even tried regenerating my Extensions.mkext and reparing permisssion via terminal using a small script:

 

#!/bin/sh
KEXT_RETAIL="/System/Library/Extensions"
KEXT_EXTRA="/Extra/Extensions"
MKEXT="/Extra/Extensions.mkext"
chmod -vR 755 "$KEXT_EXTRA"
chown -vR root:wheel "$KEXT_EXTRA"
kextcache -v 1 -t -l -m "$MKEXT" "$KEXT_EXTRA" "$KEXT_RETAIL"

 

No way to get restart working. What am I doing wrong?

 

Thanks!

 

Try using the openhaltrestart kext from Jon55's set. I haven't gotten it working either but I haven't tried this.

Please report back.

[rbonon]

Try using the openhaltrestart kext from Jon55's set. I haven't gotten it working either but I haven't tried this.

Please report back.

 

Dlach, thanks. That did the trick. Restart is working like a charm and it is even sleeping now, which it was not before, although the sleep problems (no eth0) still persist.

 

About sleeping: does anybody have a clue what may be the root cause of it not working properly? Is it a question of drivers (kexts), or of a need to further adjust the BIOS and DSDT?

 

Regards

[dlach]

Dlach, thanks. That did the trick. Restart is working like a charm and it is even sleeping now, which it was not before, although the sleep problems (no eth0) still persist.

 

About sleeping: does anybody have a clue what may be the root cause of it not working properly? Is it a question of drivers (kexts), or of a need to further adjust the BIOS and DSDT?

 

Regards

 

Thanks for letting us know. I don't know for sure why the sleep problems occur, but I suspect it is the DSDT. Looking at the DSDT from the MacBook, it seems to be doing more in the _WAK function that ours does. Also I think possibly just making sure all of the USB devices enumerate their buses may help. I've been more focused on the memory problem of late but ironically am more interested in sleep since it affects usability. I think it should be possible to get nForceLan working but I think you have to fiddle with the one of the other nforce ethernet kexts in IONetworkingFamily.

 

I'd love to rid us of the necessity of these kexts though and get the native audio resuming.

[rbonon]

Thanks for letting us know. I don't know for sure why the sleep problems occur, but I suspect it is the DSDT. Looking at the DSDT from the MacBook, it seems to be doing more in the _WAK function that ours does. Also I think possibly just making sure all of the USB devices enumerate their buses may help. I've been more focused on the memory problem of late but ironically am more interested in sleep since it affects usability. I think it should be possible to get nForceLan working but I think you have to fiddle with the one of the other nforce ethernet kexts in IONetworkingFamily.

 

I'd love to rid us of the necessity of these kexts though and get the native audio resuming.

 

If you would ask me, I think the sleep problem is much more anoying than the memory, even more as memory can be worked around with a graphics card. I personally love to leave my computers always on sleep. These Gigabyte boards are quite good (under Linux and Windows) on recovering from Sleep via USB mouse of keyboard (mine even wakes up via a hacked custom made IR receiver that controls XBMC under Linux). So, now it is time to learn some DSDT tweeking ...

 

Do you have any links with some DSDT guru that could help us?

[wanky]

If you would ask me, I think the sleep problem is much more anoying than the memory, even more as memory can be worked around with a graphics card. I personally love to leave my computers always on sleep. These Gigabyte boards are quite good (under Linux and Windows) on recovering from Sleep via USB mouse of keyboard (mine even wakes up via a hacked custom made IR receiver that controls XBMC under Linux). So, now it is time to learn some DSDT tweeking ...

 

Do you have any links with some DSDT guru that could help us?

 

Hi rbonon,

I am also trying to get into DSDT stuff. Most of the information is dispersed over the Forum (my point of view). A good thread and guide to start is here.

I haven't manged to get my graphics card (espacially both of them 8600GTS & 9400) working yet, but still trying if I have the time .

Greetings

Wanky

[rbonon]

Hi rbonon,

I am also trying to get into DSDT stuff. Most of the information is dispersed over the Forum (my point of view). A good thread and guide to start is here.

 

Wanky,

 

that guide looks like a good starting point. But DSDT will require time and lots of knowledge building for me (fun at the end )

 

Hello all,

 

I am posting as a PDF the exact steps in which I applied Dlach's SL guide in my case.

 

I did some adaptations that may be interesting to others:

- Install from a single bootable USB stick

- Enable installation on MBR Hard disks

- Details on which Jon55's Kexts iin order to restart and sound working

 

Snow_Leopard_on_Gigabyte_GA_E7AUM_D2SH.pdf

 

 

Regards

[dlach]

Wanky,

 

that guide looks like a good starting point. But DSDT will require time and lots of knowledge building for me (fun at the end )

 

Hello all,

 

I am posting as a PDF the exact steps in which I applied Dlach's SL guide in my case.

 

I did some adaptations that may be interesting to others:

- Install from a single bootable USB stick

- Enable installation on MBR Hard disks

- Details on which Jon55's Kexts iin order to restart and sound working

 

 

 

Regards

 

Rbonon, nice concise write up. I will fix up post #1 with regard to the kexts and point people to your doc for MBR. That is a good MBR method and the one I use on my Dell 1530 which tri-boots OSX, Vista, Ubuntu. Since get OSX working, the only time I use anything else is Vista for the DSDT patcher.

 

Wanky and Rbonon,

Unfortunately I can't point you to any DSDT guru. I've been searching for info and found bits and pieces. The ACPI spec is supposed to be useful (all 700+ pages). When I look at DSDT.dsl files it seems like there are several ways of doing things (e.g. putting scope and methods inside a device block or keeping them separate). Right now I am trying to see what I can bring over from the macbook pro .dsl file posted by Milkwagon a couple of pages back.

Since that version of the macbook pro uses the nvidia 9400m chipset, I think there should be blocks we could directly use or at a minimum with some tweaking.

[rbonon]

Since get OSX working, the only time I use anything else is Vista for the DSDT patcher.

I just log into Windows to watch some 720p MKVs. Somehow (may be missingin something) it plays very slowly and drops frames on Snow Leopard, even with when using Mplayer. Other than that, doing everything on SL.

 

Since that version of the macbook pro uses the nvidia 9400m chipset, I think there should be blocks we could directly use or at a minimum with some tweaking.

What is the status on your machine right now? Is it only eth0 that do not resume properly from sleep. If that is the case, wouldn't it be easier or quicker instead of messing with DSDT, to trick the drivers, as you mentioned with the NForceLan?

 

Regards

[dlach]

I just log into Windows to watch some 720p MKVs. Somehow (may be missingin something) it plays very slowly and drops frames on Snow Leopard, even with when using Mplayer. Other than that, doing everything on SL.

 

Look at the guide on Leopard. There is an upstream driver you can remove to make MKVs play smoother.

 

What is the status on your machine right now? Is it only eth0 that do not resume properly from sleep. If that is the case, wouldn't it be easier or quicker instead of messing with DSDT, to trick the drivers, as you mentioned with the NForceLan?

 

Regards

 

Neither audio or LAN resume properly from sleep. I get around the audio problem with a usb audio device. I may play around some more with nForceLan but I am interested in getting the DSDT correct so that we don't need any of these kexts. And I am pretty sure it is possible since the macbook uses the same nForce chipset for LAN. Audio is another matter. I also want to understand the DSDT so I can work on other platforms.

[olegischinski]

hi,

 

for further verification: here is the debug folder from DSDT-Patcher by fassl running on a Mac mini 3,1 under SL.

 

Have much fun!

Archiv.zip

[x4nd0r]

Hi dlach,

 

Hoes the dtds comming allong, can you maybe an update what you are working on?

 

-X

[dlach]

Hi dlach,

 

Hoes the dtds comming allong, can you maybe an update what you are working on?

 

-X

 

Not much progress lately. I have been working on trying to merge over sections of the macbook pro dsdt.dsl that Milkwagon posted.

Also in touch with Gigabyte re: how to patch the DSDT to keep OSX from writing into the video buffer.

 

Latest message from them:

 

"The bios was attached when system memory is greater than 2GB it will relocate Video Buffer (256MB) to TOM (Top Memory) -128MB location.

If system has 4GB plus some reserved memory then Video Buffer will be around location 0x70000000~0x7FFFFFFF.

The normal Video Buffer location should be 0xB0000000~0xBFFFFFFF

Because we already reserved the location for Video buffer at E820 and ASL code therefore Windows/Linux will not write/read from this area. We are not really sure how to help them because we are not familiar with OSX, maybe the problem is because OSX ignores the E820 and ASL therefore this problem is caused.

 

Please confirm whether if the problem occurs at 0x70000000~0x7FFFFFFF? "

[armacell]

I just ordered the mobo and the parts so i have a question . What is the best way to dual boot win7 and snow? Should I install snow first and then win7 or the way around, or it doesn't matter?

[x4nd0r]

Rebel EFI

-----------

 

Any one tried this with this main board?

[fparmentier]

Yeah, Rebel EFI!

 

I'm following this topic for a while. Today I wanted to order the mainboard, seems it isn't available anymore:(

 

But anyway, I read about Rebel EFI on tweakers.net! It seems like the perfect solution. First I want to order the mainboard. Than I want to test the Rebel EFI and maybe the methods described here.

 

Felix

[rbonon]

Yeah, Rebel EFI!

 

I'm following this topic for a while. Today I wanted to order the mainboard, seems it isn't available anymore:(

 

But anyway, I read about Rebel EFI on tweakers.net! It seems like the perfect solution. First I want to order the mainboard. Than I want to test the Rebel EFI and maybe the methods described here.

 

Felix

 

Isn't this thing doing more or less the same as Chameleon?